I’ve taken care of a baby jade plant, as part of my greener family, for the better part of three years, now.

She’s sick. Her leaves are curling up and turning black and falling off. Her beautiful, once-strong branches and drooping and the leaves keep going from light green to dark green and back as she struggles to survive. I’ve cut her back so far and removed so much dead or decaying material that she’s hardly recognizable. I took her out of old oil and gave her new soil.

She LOVED the old window in our old apartment. She doesn’t seem to quite love the light in any of the windows in our new apartment.

Maybe I shouldn’t feel as sad as I do about this. It’s just a plant, right? But, maybe, it’s a death nonetheless and that’s what’s getting to me.

If you’re some dude, and you’re thinking about telling me to smile, you better make sure you have a million dollars in cash that you’re about to hand over to me no questions asked — because, otherwise, I don’t know what the fuck there is for you to tell me to smile about.

When you live your life scared of almost everything, you tend to have to give a lot of apologies.

Lots of apologies sent when breaking plans. Social situations make me incredibly anxious. It could be 1 person or it could be 30, it doesn’t matter. I’m anxious. If there is free/cheap/any booze to be had, I will be having some. I might accidentally over drink just to make things manageable, rushing through my first cocktail, making awkward jokes about “social lubricants” and laughing at myself. Then maybe I drink too much and I become unmanageable. I might say some stupid things. I might embarrass myself. And then all of this new embarrassment feeds into the next time I’m in public. It cycles. Like everything.

But, also, it’s hard when you have a lot of pain and you aren’t sure if you should or shouldn’t go out on a particular day. It’s hard to know if that’s a valid reason to break existing plans. It’s hard to know if insomnia is a good reason to break plans. It’s hard to know if massive anxiety is a good reason to break plans. It’s hard to tell people the truth when you don’t know what they’ll say. It’s hard to know if what they say is the truth because you can’t read their mind.

There’s the apologies after I ignore my phone for the umpteenth time. The phone sucks. I don’t know what happened between the phone-OBSESSED years I spent as a teenager I experienced and the absolute, heart-jumping fear I experience when the phone rings, now and for the last ten years. Part of me thinks that it’s about the time that landlines became a thing of the past and suddenly people could call you anywhere you were. We’re not alone anymore, we’re being stalked every day. You don’t go to the park and leave your TV, computer, and phone at home — you bring them with you in the form of a tiny infinity box. You never left your living room and you’re going to get a sunburn. I miss when leaving the house meant no one really knew where the hell you were. Like, you told your parents what your plans were… but how would they really know?

I send a lot of apologies because I don’t respond in a timely manner to things that make me anxious even a tiny bit. A person I’m nervous about, a subject I’d rather avoid, something I’m feeling particularly sensitive about that day, or because I am in such an ugly place that I literally can’t handle any part of my adult life and spend the day cleaning the house, crying intermittently.

I feel like I might have to apologize for this entry. There are always the inevitable people with whom I attempt to share my fears with who tell me “Oh, but you don’t have to feel that way with me.” And that makes my heart speed up. That makes me clam up. I’m done sharing with this person because they clearly do not understand how this silent terror tends to operate. The anxiety grows when they message me. They must be thinking that since we had our conversation and they assured me I had nothing to worry about that I’ll pick that phone right up! No ma’am.

And maybe they aren’t thinking that, but I don’t know that. I don’t know anything other than the crushing fear of potentially embarrassing situations. I don’t know anything other than the remembered pain of past regressions against some invented and unreasonable standard I’ve placed on myself and reality.

I’ve missed weddings. That hurts so many people. I feel awful. I stay up at night thinking about things that happened a decade ago, wondering how I could have changed them, fixed them, or lived them differently. I’ve missed graduations and deaths, births and birthdays, and didn’t even initially pick up the phone when my mother called me from my dad’s cell to tell me I had to come home and we were losing him. I still don’t know exactly how I feel about that. Some things don’t feel remotely appropriate to even attempt an apology, so I just stew and feel horrible and know that I messed up and continue to feel helpless.

I apologize for apologizing so much. All the time. For everything I do, say and think. I apologize for my very existence sometimes. At least that’s what it feels like. Like, I have to apologize to the people in my life constantly for the mere fact that we are existing on this same terrestrial plane and they have to deal with me.

Already in my head I’m thinking, “I’m going to have to take this entry down,” because it’s just too embarrassing. It’s too self centered, or something like that. It’s too painful and weird. Someone is going to have something to say and they must be right, right? But that all goes back into the cyclical nature of fear and how it can affect the human mind. My human mind, specifically.

It doesn’t make sense. You either like something or you, really, just don’t.

Have we confused that childish, joyful laughter and smile accompanied by a skip in heart beat and a jovial surge of energy when we hear some new magical music? If we laugh at something new, does that mean we only like it ironically.

You don’t learn the lyrics and obsess over something you like ironically. You like it, dude. It literally makes you happy.

So, maybe just go on liking the shit you like and fuck what other people think.

(Listening to Weird Al. Unironically. Which I’ve decided is a real word. Also unironically.)